The heron has landed: a review of Ubuntu 8.04

Ubuntu 8.04 was released last month with highly-anticipated features like …

Upstream improvements

GNOME

Ubuntu is built on top of the GNOME desktop environment, an extensive assortment of desktop software applications and core user interface components. In Ubuntu, GNOME provides the panels and file manager as well as many of the basic utilities.

Ubuntu 8.04 includes GNOME 2.22, which was released in March. The new version of GNOME brings some very important architectural improvements to GNOME, like the new GVFS virtual filesystem abstraction layer and the PolicyKit secure privilege escalation system. For a comprehensive overview of the new features in GNOME 2.22, check out our review from March.

Ubuntu has made good progress with PolicyKit integration, but there are still a few places—like the software update utility—where the old gksudo dialogs show up. GVFS integration in Ubuntu is also relatively good, but the FUSE backend seems to fail consistently after several hours of use. Attempting to access ~/.gvfs returns a "Transport endpoint is not connected " error. It is unclear whether this error is the result of a bug in GVFS or if it is a problem with Ubuntu.

Firefox

Ubuntu 8.04 controversially adopted Firefox 3 beta 5 as the default web browser. Although Firefox 3 is still under development and has not been officially released, our extensivetesting indicates that it is significantly better than Firefox 2 and is ready for widespread use. Mozilla will be issuing the first Firefox 3 release candidate soon, and the final release is expected to happen sometime in July. The final release will be pushed out to Ubuntu users through the software update system.

In Ubuntu 7.10, Firefox included some nice customizations, including an extension installation system that integrates with Ubuntu's package management system. These customizations still work great in Ubuntu 8.04. The only change we noticed is that Ubuntu's plugin finder service now offers Swfdec in addition to Gnash and Adobe's Flash player.

Compiz

Compiz, the compositing window manager that bring elaborate visual effects to the Ubuntu desktop, has evolved considerably in the past six months. Ubuntu includes a recent version which has support for some new plugins like Shelf. The Appearance Preferences dialog still provides the same options as before, but the Custom option no longer appears when the CCSM configuration utility is installed. CCSM is still not included by default and can be installed from the universe repository.

Conclusion

Ubuntu 7.10 set the standard for power and ease of use for Linux desktop distributions. Ubuntu 8.04 pushes forward, but trips over its own feet because of the PulseAudio integration problems. The clear failure to improve some of the weak spots that we identified in 7.10—like Tracker's mediocre search tool—also detracts from the value of this release.

Despite the problems, Ubuntu 8.04 still offers a better and more polished desktop than its predecessor. Users who are willing to work around the PulseAudio problems will have no trouble adopting it now, but those who aren't comfortable with that might want to wait until the release of 8.04.1, which will resolve some of the most significant bugs that users have discovered in the release.

With an incremental six-month release cycle, bugs are easily justified as transitional problems introduced by new technologies that haven't had a chance to mature yet. The problems are harder to excuse for this version because, as a long-term support release, it was supposed to be more robust. The previous release was the "gutsy" one with experimental new technologies and this was supposed to be the "hardy" one with an emphasis on stability. I'm quite happy to suffer with the bugs for six months, but I can't imagine anybody using it on the desktop for three years in its current state. This release is disappointing because it falls short of what was promised, but it still delivers a lot of value for experienced users who will be able to work around the weaknesses.

Ubuntu has achieved Linux desktop dominance by offering a significantly better experience and more usability than competing distributions, but with the others are starting to catch up in those areas, this is a bad time for Ubuntu to be stumbling. Fedora 9 and openSUSE 11 are both right around the corner and they might finally give Ubuntu a real challenge on the desktop.

Ubuntu 8.10, which is codenamed Intrepid Ibex and is tentatively scheduled for release in October, will include improvements to mobile computing and desktop scalability. A strong 8.10 release with fewer problems out of the box would help put Ubuntu back on track.

If you've taken the plunge on Hardy Heron already, you can join Ars Technica's Linux community in our Linux Kung Fu forum for some collaborative troubleshooting (1, 23).